Throughout the history of the mail delivery, there has been a gradual evolution whereby the post office encourages mailers to prepare their mail in such a way as to reduce the effort required on the part of the post office for processing such mail. As an inducement to the mailer to prepare the mail in such a way so as to bring about faster mail delivery, the post office offers a postage discount to mailers for such items as presorted mail and printing of nine digit zip codes. Discounts are also given when the mail is produced in a manner allowing automatic processing with machines such as optical character recognition (OCR) sorters and bar code readers and sorters.
Even with present mail processing techniques that have come into being as a result of reduced postage rates for presorted mail, zip code mail and the like, the post office is still experiencing difficulties in meeting targeted delivery times for the mail. The primary reason for such difficulties is the increase in volume of mail that has taken place over the decades.
Systems and methods have been conceived and described wherein the efforts required by the post office to process mail has been reduced. One of the problems the post office faced previously was that a significant amount of mail presented to the post office did not have the required postage or did not meet the requirements of postal regulations. A scheme for overcoming this problem was disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/594,515, supra. In that patent application, a scheme is disclosed whereby mail is processed in such a manner that the mail is sorted to separate the local mail from the non local mail, the non local mail is placed into trays in accordance with their zip codes and a label is printed that identifies the mail in the tray for subsequent processing. As a part of this scheme, the post office is given a running account of the mail being processed so that postage can be accurately determined and the post office is able to process the mail further without having to inspect the same to assure proper payment.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 641,985, supra, discloses a system whereby labels can be printed by a mailer for the trays and the sacks into which mail is placed for a common carrier, particularly an air carrier. U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,620, supra, discloses a system and method whereby mail that is not addressed locally is conveyed by a mailer to a common carrier. In so doing, the mailer discloses to the local post office information relative to the mail with regard to the number of trays of mail, their weight, their distinction and information that may allow the mailer to receive a postal discount for his mail. Upon receipt of the information, the post office would then determine the cost of air freight for the mail which is looked upon by the common carrier as bulk freight.
Although the concepts described in these patent applications addressed areas where implementation of activities on the part of the mailer would benefit the post office, there are still many areas where the amount of effort required by the post office can be reduced.
In the processing of mail previously, non local mail processed by a mailer so as to obtain postal discounts was still sent to the local post office. This procedure was addressed by U.S. Pat. No. 5,216,620, supra. Although such system functioned well, it still required communication with a local post office and relied upon the post office for to flight information. There was no correlation between the destination of the mail being processed and the time of flight for such destination.